730 Days of Solitude
by sushirapper
Summary: Drabble collection of the two years the Straw Hats spent away from Luffy—and each other. Not in chronological order. Marked as complete, but updated as inspiration strikes. Rated T for language (mostly because of Sanji).
1. DAY 365 - Zoro

_from the place I was, to the place I am, to the place I want to be_

 ** _SWS - With Ears To See, and Eyes to Hear_**

* * *

Breakfast was a quiet affair, as it always was with these two. A clatter of metal against glass had both of them looking up from their food; Zoro had thrown his fork down violently at his largely untouched meal.

He suddenly thrust himself noisily from the table, stalked towards the exit, and slammed the door in his wake.

"Why _that little_ -" Perona had already risen halfway from her seat when the voice of the room's only other occupant at this point halted her.

"Leave him be."

She turned to Mihawk incredulously, ready to snap at him that even _he_ had to admit that was unbelievably rude of that sorry excuse for a swordsman-

But he wasn't looking at her.

Instead, he watched the door Zoro had gone through, a look of deep contemplation on his face. Perona huffed in annoyance and settled back down in her seat.

She found him hours later by the sea, having gone looking for the idiot who got lost on the way to his own room nine times out of ten when he didn't show up for dinner either. He was on his back, bedraggled and drenched in blood, his bandages nowhere to be seen and seemingly unconscious. Humandrills covered every inch of the beach around him, all the way up to the treeline; not a single one of them looked any better than the grasshead.

She hovered over him uncertainly, unsure of what to do with this sudden regress of Zoro's behaviour to his reckless, near suicidal attitude from when they'd first arrived and he was still trying to get back to his captain.

"Just one more year." Perona nearly jumped out of her skin when he spoke. His eyes were still closed, and Perona wasn't entirely sure he was talking to _her_.

"Just one more year," Zoro said again.

She finally floated down to sit next to him, knees pulled up to her chest and arms wrapped around her knees. "Yeah," was all she could say.

"Yeah."


	2. Day 112 - Nami

_your love's a fucking drag, but I need it so bad_

 ** _PaTD - Nicotine_**

* * *

She climbed nimbly out of the balloon ship and landed with a cheeky wave and a cheerful smile to the old men working on maintenance on the other balloon ships moored— _is that the right term, I wonder_ —in the hangar, but little else. There was something she wanted to do, and the trip to the surface to get supplies and research data had provided her with the means to do it.

A few minutes later found Nami sitting on the ground of the tiny garden behind the house Haredas-san had loaned her, as per her instructions. She sat with her back against the wall, knees bent into a wide angle with her arms hanging heavily on top of them, a lit cigarette dangling between lax fingers. Three burnt out cigarette butts were lined up neatly next to the open box on the ground by her side, a plain black lighter pilfered from the chemist's storerooms on the other.

"Oi, oi, oi. Oi, oi, oi, oi."

Nami looked up with a small smile to this rather obnoxious greeting, Haredas-san's head was tilted at an odd angle towards her and entirely too close for comfort.

"Young lady. I didn't know you smoked...?"

The way his sentence trailed off implied a question-and Nami knew she was under no obligation to answer, but she found herself chuckling softly as she went ahead and did anyway.

"I don't, not really." She paused to take a deep drag of the cigarette, motioning the old man to sit upwind, away from the direction the smoke blew in as she exhaled. "It's just..."

She didn't know how to continue that. As a navigator ( _as Luffy's navigator_ ), she couldn't really afford to smoke for real. It tended to ruin an otherwise perfectly normal palette and, more importantly, a person's sense of smell; something she couldn't do without if she wanted to be able to sense and maneuver the Grand Line's freak weather patterns before they even hit. But then again...

Nami glanced down at the pack of cigarettes, not the kind she'd known growing up, and yet so very intimately familiar it made her heart ache and her stomach swoop with unhappiness. She watched the embers of the lit end of her cigarette and flicked it with a familiar motion as the ashes began to extend.

"Just a bit of nostalgia, I suppose," she finally said, glancing up once more to flash a less-than-perfect smile as unreal as the thought of a sea without Luffy in it. It wasn't her best work, and she'd work on that, but for now Haredas-san had remained silent this whole while, letting her wallow in her own thoughts.

So she told him.

She spoke of the mother who had left her behind, the mother who'd given more than she could yet never asked for more. A lovely smile even when Nami screeched in alarm and Nojiko giggled in sadistic glee as Nami messed up using the razor to help shave the sides of soft red hair. She told him of soft words spoken into the dark after waking up from a thrashing nightmare about monsters under the bed, and the smell of mikan juice in the air when she awoke.

At one point while she spoke, her new guardian—or perhaps her new keeper, as the wary old men probably saw him-had taken a seat next to her, his arms wrapped around his knees as they were tucked in close to his chest, like a little child needing comfort. And at some point as she spoke, Nami had started speaking instead of a flamboyant chef with a penchant for expensive suits, of a home on the sea with grass on its deck and a space especially designed for the mikan trees she'd brought to carry home around with her. She laughed softly as she recounted his elaborate fawning, the perfectly timed cold drinks when the weather was at its boiling point; of the times when he was quiet, for once, sharing in her company in silence and with quiet drags instead of his usually obnoxious servitude.

"The first time it happened," she said, forcing a joking laugh into her voice instead of the violent shaking it wanted to put there, "I didn't even realize how overwhelmed I'd been sailing out to sea like that with no plans at all until he just came over to stand next to me by the railing. Didn't even say anything, just stood there and looked out to the sea, smoking like he's trying to die early."

Nami couldn't continue past that. She never got to say how the scent of tobacco had calmed her, had reminded her of her long gone mother, and how precious Sanji's awkward, fumbling smile had been to her in that instant. She was shaking so hard she couldn't even joke about the miracle it was that Sanji wasn't sick and coughing out his lungs the way he burned through cigarettes when he didn't know what to do in situations like that.

She didn't really notice that Haredas-san had gotten up or that the sun was already sinking until he went around her to pick up the half-empty box of cigarettes and scooped the butts she had still lined up neatly next to each other into his other hand.

"Now, now, now. No more smoking for you, young lady."

And Nami couldn't argue that, she shouldn't be smoking at all, really, except—

"You'll see them soon enough, won't you?"

A choking laugh bubbled out of Nami in reply to that. She kept her eyes on the ground between her feet as she listened to Haredas-san shuffle away, humming cheerily all the while.

The next day, Nami found the cigarette pack and a brand new, white-gold lighter tucked carefully between her research notes. With an energy she didn't have to fake for once, she bounded out the door to pester the old men to teach her about the Grand Line.

She left the cigarettes where they were.


	3. Day 45 - Robin

_but we're too damn sober for mistakes like this_

 ** _Prelow - Mistakes Like This_**

* * *

The first time Robin met the Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Army, the first words to pass his lips were, " _I'm so sorry._ "

After, he would go on to explain, to try and tell Robin what this blond stranger treated by the Revolutionary Army with deference was doing in her space, bowed at the waist and eyes turned to the ground. But all he managed to say was, "Ace was—" before the words seemed to stick in his throat and Robin could only watch as his jaw worked but his voice remained absent.

She understood more than she wished to.

Because this was grief. The kind of grief Robin had spent sleepless night after sleepless night imagining wracking her captain's form as he tried to keep himself strong, to keep himself together—

The kind of grief that could only mean—

All of these things that could only possibly mean that—

"Luffy is your brother," she supplied. Robin's eyes began to burn but she'd learned the hard way to keep her emotions tucked away in a distant corner of her heart, and they remained dry even when the young man turned haunted eyes to her, gratitude glimmering in their depths. She forced herself to smile. "Thank you for taking care of him until he could find us."

His breath draws in sharply and his hands began to shake, tiny, controlled tremors as though he wanted to shake apart but didn't only because of his ironclad control; his jaw clenched around words he obviously couldn't say, couldn't believe, even as his breathing slowly came apart. He straightens, slowly, as if the weight on his back was too much to bear, and Robin's heart crumbled.

 _(Messy black hair and bloodshot brown eyes superimposed themselves on the man in front of her, broken and distraught, forcing strength, tears hidden for the silence of the nights—)_

"No," he finally said, interrupting her thoughts, and Robin was impressed at the levelness of his tone. "Thank _you_ for taking care of him in my absence. I am much obliged to you and the rest of his crew."

Neither of them speak of the fact that they were both absent in the moment Luffy needed them the most, didn't need to acknowledge the ugly truth that they owed each other no thanks for they had both failed him.

They had both failed him.

But-

"I'll never fail him again," he vows, and Robin's smile promises him the same.

She can only hope they aren't too late.


	4. Day 327 - Sanji

_if heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied_

 ** _DCfC - I Will Follow You Into The Dark_**

* * *

"This place is hell," Sanji growled, panting heavily with his back against a wall.

Shutting his eyes and taking a deep drag of his cigarette, he sent his awareness out to beyond the abandoned village, feeling for those fuckers pretending to be sorry excuses for women. He'd learned early on that sneaking your head out to check if anyone was following you was a one-way ticket to Molest-o-ville and had adapted accordingly. Sensing no one, he relaxed. Sanji glared down at the scroll in his hand, the 62nd recipe of the Newkama Kenpo technique.

He wanted to say they were hardly worth the trouble, but he'd already tried out the ones he'd managed to grab first whenever he wasn't being chased, and he'd have been lying if he said so.

"Tsk." Sanji flicked the cigarette stub away and sauntered towards the second house on the left on the next block.

He'd made a little hideout there, stealing stoves and cooking materials and the like for a chance to relax and cook in peace every now and then without having to keep looking over his shoulder in fear of being snatched and stuffed into that wretched sweets dress.

He kicked the door open to his place as he lit another stick, taking a deep drag before shutting the door behind him. He figured Ivankov at least knew of this place and kept the other _okamas_ off his back whenever he retreated to his only sanctuary on this godforsaken island (not that he hung around here all that much, anyway; he'd made a promise he very well intended to keep and hiding away wasn't gonna get him any closer to his goals).

He wasn't about to thank that overdone drama queen, though.

Still, these recipes were his ticket to get strong enough to get out of here as soon as possible—and they would help Luffy.

Sanji finally threw his cigarette out the window and set to work, rolling up his sleeves and tying the apron behind his back. He loses himself to the rhythm of chopping and mixing, seasoning this just right and marinating that just long enough. It wasn't until the chef meant to sift the flour for the crust that he noticed. He was reaching for the largest metal bowl, set on one edge of the counter, and he didn't know how he hadn't noticed. He glanced over... and saw a familiar smile right next to his collection of rare spices.

The blond's knees go weak and he slips, sending the bowl clattering to the ground; along with eight pages of mildly rumpled paper, not old but not quite new either, with the familiar format any pirate worth their salt would know like the back of their hand. Sanji stumbled away from the smiles on the face of the Straw Hat Crew ( _ **his** crew, his **family**_ **),** dish entirely forgotten as he fumbled for the pack tucked away in a pocket.

How could he not have noticed? He knew his kitchen like Robin knew her books, each page and crease and smudged bit of ink memorized and recalled with no conscious thought. Why were their bounty posters even here? Had he asked for them—yes, he had. Once, when he had just gotten here, and his own weakness had gotten the better of his pride, but Ivankov had refused and later he had been too busy to even spare it another thought—

The chef's fingers shook so hard he couldn't even light his cigarette anymore, and finally gave up on it with a helpless laugh, sinking to the floor in defeat. He shut his eyes to the eight faces he hadn't seen in so, _so long and I wonder if that idiot Luffy is eating well? The shitty marimo has probably bled out by now, and Chopper'd be so damn worried_ —he choked on his thoughts and forced them down to where he wouldn't have to hear how the memory of their laughter was fading from his mind.

Sanji took a deep breath and only succeeded in allowing the taste of saltwater to trickle by the edges of his lips. He took one more shuddering inhale and somehow summoned the strength to wrap his arms around himself. (It didn't do anything to lessen the empty hollow in his chest his nakama had once filled with their noise and cheer and obnoxious affection.)

He laughed again and flinched as the sound echoed in the empty room. "This place... is hell."


End file.
